So, maybe I was trying too hard with the title, but it accurately summarises my past week. The trials and tribulations of midjourney, its immense potential and innumerable flaws.
For example, how many ways to render the humble bowl of fruit?
Pick your style — minimalism, maximalism, abstract, grunge, photorealism — just the tip of the fruity iceberg! Now how long would it take to create any of these from scratch?
Days?
Try five minutes, and after a mere half-hour spent learning how to use real images as the seed for variations, my portraiture has improved.
Barely took two minutes. Sucked in Rembrandt!
I know there’s a debate about AI promulgating identity theft. Broke up with your girlfriend? Splice her slatternly head onto Lana Rhoades’s body and loose it upon the chans! Take that, bitch. Forever! Hope your future prospective employers never Googles too deep!
But we were doing that before AI. Remember ye olde Photoshop? Anyway, this particular app resists photorealism. Just compare the very famous John Cena with the best reproduction I could summons.
Not the same bloke, right? Not far off (pats self on back), but AI John isn’t fooling anyone. Hard to replicate the real John’s insane vascularity with an AI prompt.
I did try — on other subject — and produced on of my favourit images so far.
I typed ‘mother, vascularity, close up’ thinking I’d get a lady who goes to the gym. I know doctors say it’s important for bone density and whatnot to build lean muscle through resistance training, but this?
Yeah nah.
I’m reassured and frustrated in equal measure by Midjourney’s inbuilt skin detectors and aversion to reproducing anything accurately, meaning she becomes her:
Midjourney quite clearly is a leg-man.
Doesn’t like boobs.
This tasteful boobish portrait by world-renowned photorgapher Sean Archer becomes something after upscaling in midjourney that barely echoes the original unless we put them side-by-side:
Again, no comparison.
So you won’t turn to this app to splice images of your beloved together to make something nice. What happens is a total stranger, perhaps a horrorshow. But you can create cute cats, tho!
Awww…
But me (being me) of course is using this app to prompt my storytelling. A post-apocalyptic novel I’ve been plotting for decades opens on the day everything hits the fan.
This image frenetically illustrates the bedlam.
It also illustrates a universal constant:
“Ladies, when the world ends, you will be wearing a singlet.”
Called ‘The Singlet Constant’, it’s scientific symbol is (*)(*) but typically the digital-nannies and prudes stalking the backrooms at midjourney won’t let me type it!
Is this the end of boobs???